a) Field of the Invention
This invention relates to an electronic musical instrument and more particularly to an electronic musical instrument capable of simultaneously generating musical sounds of a plurality of tone colors in ensemble performance.
In this specification, "ensemble" means performance in more than two kinds of tone colors at the same time.
b) Description of the Related Art
Developments in electronic engineering have made it possible to generate a variety of tone colors in electronic musical instruments. It has become general that a multiplicity of manipulators, called tone color selecting switches or tone color designating switches, for selecting a desired tone color among the multiplicity of tone colors such as piano, flute, violin, synthesizer, etc. are provided on a panel of an electronic musical instrument.
A player of the electronic musical instrument selectively manipulates a tone color selecting switch for selecting a tone color to be generated. In response to the performance in a keyboard, etc., musical sounds of the preselected one tone color are generated.
Japanese Patent Publication No. Sho. 62-52316 proposed the duet or ensemble mode performance where a plurality of tone colors are generated simultaneously in response to a signal performance.
Such an electronic musical instrument is already available which has a duet mode switch and a multiplicity of tone color switches on a panel. When a player selects one tone color and additionally pushes the duet mode switch and another tone color switch, two tone colors are selected to generate musical sounds in two tone colors simultaneously. Thus, the musical sounds can be given depth and variety.
In the prior art as described above, it is necessary, for obtaining a duet or ensemble effect, to push another duet or dual voice switch and then push a tone color switch to be additionally generated. Such two-step (provided that one color has already been selected) action may be cumbersome for the player especially during a performance and may interrupt the performance.